Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Dutch Country, near Lancaster
I have begun to realize that there are very few uniquely indigenous communities or areas left in the U.S. Slowly, inexorably, they are becoming homogenized, their distinctive elements sanitized and commercialized to attract tourists – who apparently are not satisified with experiencing the culture and livelihood in its natural state. Rather, it must be contained in a can or jar, reduced to a phrase (preferably off-color) on a tee shirt, or depicted in an 8X10 matted full color fine art print of your choice of local heritage sites (frame extra at only $9.95). And all of these are available at the Southwest/Seminole/Cajun/Allegheny/Amish Gifts and Craft Market and Deli, where the products on the shelves are interchangeable from east coast to west coast, South Dakota to Florida, and most of them are made in China, not painstakingly by the hands of local artisans, no matter what the painstakingly-crafted-in-China-for-the look-of-handmade-wooden sign at the cash register may say.
All this is by way of saying that our trip to the Amish country in Pennsylvania was disappointing, to say the least. We drive to Intercourse, PA, where we’re told we’ll see representative Amish life, products and foods. We discover that it’s shop after shop filled with typical ticky-tacky, all of it labeled “Amish” or “Pennsylvania Dutch” to convince us it’s the real thing. We visit the Bird-in-Hand farmer’s market, famed (or so we read) for its fresh produce, meats and cheeses, baked goods and hand-crafted décor, and find the same produce, meats and cheeses we could buy in the grocery store, not organic, hormone and antibiotic free products I foolishly expected the Amish would produce. We leave without contributing any of our money to the local commerce.
There is one exception to our disappointment – the quilts in the Old Country Store and the People’s Place Quilt Museum. They are indeed works of art, with traditional designs like the Wedding Ring and Lone Star as well as modern abstract designs created from all shapes and snippets of fabric in rich, deep hues. I think about the bedspread we custom-ordered when we moved into our house on Milton Drive in Scottsdale in 1989 – for which we paid a fortune. It was simply one piece of expensive machine quilted fabric. To think we could have had one of these beautiful quilts for far less money!
On the road between Intercourse and Lancaster, there is a narrow lane on the right for horse-drawn buggies. The buggies are the Amish version of modern-day vehicles; they are box-like and utilitarian, completely enclosing the driver and passengers who can not be seen from the side view. Each buggy is pulled by one sleek, well-cared for horse who clip-clops along at a pretty good pace. I want to take a picture, but don’t feel right about treating these people like tourist attractions.
The Amish homes and farms we pass in this rural countryside are easily identified; they are white, plain and unadorned – house, barn, and other outbuildings alike. There is no color or unneeded frippery – no fancy filigree trim, no painted shutters, no lathe-turned pedestal porches. There is a spare simplicity to them: looking at these buildings, neat, clean and plain, you know the time and attention of the occupants goes to what’s needed and necessary, not toward landscaping, décor or vehicles to make the neighbors envious.
Steve and I notice women in their long, drab dresses and net caps doing the yard work at many of the houses we pass. We see women blowing leaves, mowing the lawn (with a push lawnmower), and watering the shrubs and plants with a watering can. We even see an elderly woman in her dark blue dress, garden hose in hand, scrubbing the family buggy. Apparently yard work is women’s work in Pennsylvania Dutch country.
May 16-17
The Poconos, Pennsylvania
Living in Arizona for 40+ years, I’ve become accustomed to a certain landscape – treeless for the most part, beige and brown with only an occasional – and welcome – touch of green. It’s a dry and waterless environment; its beauty is subtle and not always immediately apparent – it’s the kind you learn to appreciate. So the eastern countryside has been overwhelming to me – verdant green hills and mountains lush with forests, water at every bend in the road – rivers, ponds, lakes, brooks, streams, waterfalls. I am entranced by the magic and music of the water, whether it is a still small pond in a cow pasture or a roadside creek rushing and tumbling over moss-covered rocks.
You see a lot more cemeteries here than in the West. It dawns on me why – there are more dead people here (duh!), since the East has been settled much longer. Cemeteries and churches compete with each other for land – there’s a church or cemetery (or both) around every corner in this part of the country. The churches all look very traditional – white or stone rectangular buildings with the tall pointed steeple. The surprise – many have red doors. Why? As we’re driving up to Skytop, the lodge in the Poconos where Steve’s grandfather worked years ago, I spy a small church with a beautiful stained glass window, red door and tall steeple. We stop so I can take a picture. As I’m clicking away, I hear a woman in the parking lot: “Would you like to see inside?” We go inside and admire the pressed tin roof and walls and the beautiful stained glass windows with the light streaming through. As we chat with the woman, we learn that her son worked at Mt. Baker, near Bellingham, and she stayed in Bellingham when she visited him this year. The world is tiny indeed.
The next day, we go to see the much vaunted Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cuts through the mountains. Bushkill Falls is in the same area; on the way, we see one billboard after another touting Bushkill Falls, and I comment to Steve, “You know, with all the advertising, I have a feeling Bushkill Falls is going to be just like the Natural Bridge – you pay to see it.” Sure enough, when we get to the Water Gap visitor center, the park ranger confirms that the falls are privately run and there’s a fee to enter. So we’ll be skipping that attraction. And, as it turns out, the Delaware Water Gap is pretty unimpressive – there are several “scenic overlooks” where Steve and I stop, look and wonder what’s to look at. But – while we’re hiking in the area, I notice bear tracks! We haven’t seen any bears in all our travels (although there are plenty of warnings about them) so it’s exciting just to see signs of them.
We’re heading out today to Cooperstown, NY to the Baseball Hall of Fame, then up to Montreal, through Maine and on to Nova Scotia. From there we’ll come back along the coast to Boston to visit our son, Christopher and my sister Christie.
I have begun to realize that there are very few uniquely indigenous communities or areas left in the U.S. Slowly, inexorably, they are becoming homogenized, their distinctive elements sanitized and commercialized to attract tourists – who apparently are not satisified with experiencing the culture and livelihood in its natural state. Rather, it must be contained in a can or jar, reduced to a phrase (preferably off-color) on a tee shirt, or depicted in an 8X10 matted full color fine art print of your choice of local heritage sites (frame extra at only $9.95). And all of these are available at the Southwest/Seminole/Cajun/Allegheny/Amish Gifts and Craft Market and Deli, where the products on the shelves are interchangeable from east coast to west coast, South Dakota to Florida, and most of them are made in China, not painstakingly by the hands of local artisans, no matter what the painstakingly-crafted-in-China-for-the look-of-handmade-wooden sign at the cash register may say.
All this is by way of saying that our trip to the Amish country in Pennsylvania was disappointing, to say the least. We drive to Intercourse, PA, where we’re told we’ll see representative Amish life, products and foods. We discover that it’s shop after shop filled with typical ticky-tacky, all of it labeled “Amish” or “Pennsylvania Dutch” to convince us it’s the real thing. We visit the Bird-in-Hand farmer’s market, famed (or so we read) for its fresh produce, meats and cheeses, baked goods and hand-crafted décor, and find the same produce, meats and cheeses we could buy in the grocery store, not organic, hormone and antibiotic free products I foolishly expected the Amish would produce. We leave without contributing any of our money to the local commerce.
There is one exception to our disappointment – the quilts in the Old Country Store and the People’s Place Quilt Museum. They are indeed works of art, with traditional designs like the Wedding Ring and Lone Star as well as modern abstract designs created from all shapes and snippets of fabric in rich, deep hues. I think about the bedspread we custom-ordered when we moved into our house on Milton Drive in Scottsdale in 1989 – for which we paid a fortune. It was simply one piece of expensive machine quilted fabric. To think we could have had one of these beautiful quilts for far less money!
On the road between Intercourse and Lancaster, there is a narrow lane on the right for horse-drawn buggies. The buggies are the Amish version of modern-day vehicles; they are box-like and utilitarian, completely enclosing the driver and passengers who can not be seen from the side view. Each buggy is pulled by one sleek, well-cared for horse who clip-clops along at a pretty good pace. I want to take a picture, but don’t feel right about treating these people like tourist attractions.
The Amish homes and farms we pass in this rural countryside are easily identified; they are white, plain and unadorned – house, barn, and other outbuildings alike. There is no color or unneeded frippery – no fancy filigree trim, no painted shutters, no lathe-turned pedestal porches. There is a spare simplicity to them: looking at these buildings, neat, clean and plain, you know the time and attention of the occupants goes to what’s needed and necessary, not toward landscaping, décor or vehicles to make the neighbors envious.
Steve and I notice women in their long, drab dresses and net caps doing the yard work at many of the houses we pass. We see women blowing leaves, mowing the lawn (with a push lawnmower), and watering the shrubs and plants with a watering can. We even see an elderly woman in her dark blue dress, garden hose in hand, scrubbing the family buggy. Apparently yard work is women’s work in Pennsylvania Dutch country.
May 16-17
The Poconos, Pennsylvania
Living in Arizona for 40+ years, I’ve become accustomed to a certain landscape – treeless for the most part, beige and brown with only an occasional – and welcome – touch of green. It’s a dry and waterless environment; its beauty is subtle and not always immediately apparent – it’s the kind you learn to appreciate. So the eastern countryside has been overwhelming to me – verdant green hills and mountains lush with forests, water at every bend in the road – rivers, ponds, lakes, brooks, streams, waterfalls. I am entranced by the magic and music of the water, whether it is a still small pond in a cow pasture or a roadside creek rushing and tumbling over moss-covered rocks.
You see a lot more cemeteries here than in the West. It dawns on me why – there are more dead people here (duh!), since the East has been settled much longer. Cemeteries and churches compete with each other for land – there’s a church or cemetery (or both) around every corner in this part of the country. The churches all look very traditional – white or stone rectangular buildings with the tall pointed steeple. The surprise – many have red doors. Why? As we’re driving up to Skytop, the lodge in the Poconos where Steve’s grandfather worked years ago, I spy a small church with a beautiful stained glass window, red door and tall steeple. We stop so I can take a picture. As I’m clicking away, I hear a woman in the parking lot: “Would you like to see inside?” We go inside and admire the pressed tin roof and walls and the beautiful stained glass windows with the light streaming through. As we chat with the woman, we learn that her son worked at Mt. Baker, near Bellingham, and she stayed in Bellingham when she visited him this year. The world is tiny indeed.
The next day, we go to see the much vaunted Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cuts through the mountains. Bushkill Falls is in the same area; on the way, we see one billboard after another touting Bushkill Falls, and I comment to Steve, “You know, with all the advertising, I have a feeling Bushkill Falls is going to be just like the Natural Bridge – you pay to see it.” Sure enough, when we get to the Water Gap visitor center, the park ranger confirms that the falls are privately run and there’s a fee to enter. So we’ll be skipping that attraction. And, as it turns out, the Delaware Water Gap is pretty unimpressive – there are several “scenic overlooks” where Steve and I stop, look and wonder what’s to look at. But – while we’re hiking in the area, I notice bear tracks! We haven’t seen any bears in all our travels (although there are plenty of warnings about them) so it’s exciting just to see signs of them.
We’re heading out today to Cooperstown, NY to the Baseball Hall of Fame, then up to Montreal, through Maine and on to Nova Scotia. From there we’ll come back along the coast to Boston to visit our son, Christopher and my sister Christie.
posted by Anne-Marie | 8:11 AM
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